I agree. The media and pundits are IGNORING their part of the speech that Obama pointed out -- their pushing hate with their constant stories about Ferraro and Wright.

Wake up media. Obama's trying to Help you.

Well done Greg.

I said about four posts ago that Fox and Limbaugh were lost causes but the real audience was the MSM and the people who write the meta-narrative for the MSM like Ben Smith and Mark Halperin.

Smith won't commit yet, but Obama he sure as hell got Halperin.

http://thepage.time.com/2008/03/18/obama-plans-major-tuesday-speech-on-race/

The themes in the speech are not new and have been said by many others in the past. Perhaps, one could argue it is time for a renewal of these themes; the basic issues were how and who? To his credit Obama did make the case, and he was timely far beyond the simplicity of religious expression.

Group difference will always remain, like it or not those of African heritage have had and do have a special role in U.S.A. In sum it is to demand that the common good always be on the top of the nation's agenda.

KEFA IS ON THE CASE.

Kefa will ensure that no-one will be fooled!

Honestly, it's sad what the networks come up with when they have more than a 10 second sound bite to grapple with... I can't totally fault them. Truly important ideas and concepts don't really fit into the "digest news" that passes for "information" these days.

The networks read quickly where the country was swinging after the speech and changed their headlines. Obama will be the next president.

What I was surprised about is how quickly Fox News stopped discussing the Obama speech. I was bouncing between CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, and the first two networks continued to discuss it until the top of the hour. Fox News, to the best of my knowledge, spend only about five minutes on the speech. I was bouncing, so I don't know what pundits on Fox News was saying, so I'd appreciate a video on that.

As for the discussions on CNN and MSNBC, it was all over the place. Some pundits viewed it as the most important speech on race since MLK, while some (read Pat Buchanan) felt it blamed all of black anger on whites (which is just flat wrong for anyone openly watching). I was really hoping that Pat would've seen the bigger picture of getting beyond our anger, but it doesn't look like Pat is ready to go there yet.

As far as I know, the Clinton campaign has not responded yet, even though the text has been out for hours now. Their silence speaks volumes: they are having an extremely tough time grappling with how to respond to this speech.

Headlines after Gettysburg address...

Fox News: Lincoln hates southerners

CNN: Lincoln praises dead people

ABC: Lincoln dedicates nation to a "proposition"

MSNBC: Lincoln: "world will little note nor long remember"

TPM: But what are the soundbites?

What did Obama hear? When did he hear it? What did he do about the language he now conveniently denounces? He chose to remain in the Church.

Obama's WHITE sometimes racist grandmother raised him, he could not walk away. His minister did not raise him, he could have left the Church. It's a question of Obama's judgment and character. Words matter.

POLITICO:

Obama heard controversial comments
By POLITICO STAFF | 3/18/08 12:07 PM EST

Contrary to his earlier suggestion, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) acknowledged in his speech Tuesday that he had heard “controversial” remarks by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

“Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy?” Obama said. “Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely — just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.”

Obama did not specify which statements.

In his first detailed response to the firestorm over Wright’s remarks charging that the United States is a racist country, Obama said in a posting on The Huffington Post:

“The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign.”

The statements are not directly contradictory. But Republicans are likely to seize on the passage as evidence that Obama was not completely in the dark about Wright’s inflammatory speeches.

And of course, Limbaugh completely misses the point. I mean, I'm not surprised, at all. But Christ, sometimes the absurdity makes my temples throb.

http://thepage.time.com/2008/03/18/limbaugh-attacks-obama-speech-on-race-keeps-up-pressure-on-wright/

The headline should be:

Your Dream does not come at the expense of My Dream

That captures the substance and vision of

Obama's message and the bedrock belief of all citizens in the American Dream.

You see race, I see religion.

Obama has a radical spiritual adviser screaming God damn America and McCain has one that wants to destroy Islam. Clinton does not.

This is why our founders wanted seperation of church and State.

They were dead right.

This also is worth reading again.

Lyndon B. Johnson Remarks at Gettysburg on Civil Rights (May 30, 1963)

On this hallowed ground, heroic deeds were performed and eloquent words were spoken a century ago.

We, the living, have not forgotten--and the world will never forget--the deeds or the words of Gettysburg. We honor them now as we join on this Memorial Day of 1963 in a prayer for permanent peace of the world and fulfillment of our hopes for universal freedom and justice.

We are called to honor our own words of reverent prayer with resolution in the deeds we must perform to preserve peace and the hope of freedom.

We keep a vigil of peace around the world.

Until the world knows no aggressors, until the arms of tyranny have been laid down, until freedom has risen up in every land, we shall maintain our vigil to make sure our sons who died on foreign fields shall not have died in vain.

As we maintain the vigil of peace, we must remember that justice is a vigil, too--a vigil we must keep in our own streets and schools and among the lives of all our people--so that those who died here on their native soil shall not have died in vain.

One hundred years ago, the slave was freed.

One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin.

The Negro today asks justice.

We do not answer him--we do not answer those who lie beneath this soil--when we reply to the Negro by asking, "Patience."

It is empty to plead that the solution to the dilemmas of the present rests on the hands of the clock. The solution is in our hands. Unless we are willing to yield up our destiny of greatness among the civilizations of history, Americans--white and Negro together--must be about the business of resolving the challenge which confronts us now.

Our nation found its soul in honor on these fields of Gettysburg one hundred years ago. We must not lose that soul in dishonor now on the fields of hate.

To ask for patience from the Negro is to ask him to give more of what he has already given enough. But to fail to ask of him--and of all Americans--perseverance within the processes of a free and responsible society would be to fail to ask what the national interest requires of all its citizens.

The law cannot save those who deny it but neither can the law serve any who do not use it. The history of injustice and inequality is a history of disuse of the law. Law has not failed--and is not failing. We as a nation have failed ourselves by not trusting the law and by not using the law to gain sooner the ends of justice which law alone serves.

If the white over-estimates what he has done for the Negro without the law, the Negro may under-estimate what he is doing and can do for himself with the law.

If it is empty to ask Negro or white for patience, it is not empty--it is merely honest--to ask perseverance. Men may build barricades--and others may hurl themselves against those barricades--but what would happen at the barricades would yield no answers. The answers will only be wrought by our perseverance together. It is deceit to promise more as it would be cowardice to demand less.

In this hour, it is not our respective races which are at stake--it is our nation. Let those who care for their country come forward, North and South, white and Negro, to lead the way through this moment of challenge and decision.

The Negro says, "Now." Others say, "Never." The voice of responsible Americans--the voice of those who died here and the great man who spoke here--their voices say, "Together." There is no other way.

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact. To the extent that the proclamation of emancipation is not fulfilled in fact, to that extent we shall have fallen short of assuring freedom to the free.

Terrible speach. Obama throws his Grandmother under the bus, and compares her to Rev Wright. He then compares Ferraro's statements with Rev Wright's. He then blames the white man for Rev Wrights attitude forgetting that no one living had anything to do with Jim Crow or slavery. He admits he did hear Rev Wright hateful sermons when before he said he did not. He did not address his church's or Wright's relationship to Farrakhan. He should have brought up his relationship with big donor slumlord Rezco. He should have brought up his very priveledged childhood. Would we all not like a free ride to Harvard. Like George Bush he loves to give flowery speeches but take no questions.

Terrible speach. Obama throws his Grandmother under the bus, and compares her to Rev Wright. He then compares Ferraro's statements with Rev Wright's. He then blames the white man for Rev Wrights attitude forgetting that no one living had anything to do with Jim Crow or slavery. He admits he did hear Rev Wright hateful sermons when before he said he did not. He did not address his church's or Wright's relationship to Farrakhan. He should have brought up his relationship with big donor slumlord Rezco. He should have brought up his very priveledged childhood. Would we all not like a free ride to Harvard. Like George Bush he loves to give flowery speeches but take no questions.

Marginal Thinker - have you never been in a church, mosque or synagogue and heard the clergy say offensive, even at times bizarre things?
Well then, my fine vanilla-headed friend, you must not attend services very often.

Why look what I found just now in this offensive, angry and ethnically biased book called The Bible:

12 "When you are living in the towns that the Lord your God gives you, you may hear 13 that some worthless people of your nation have misled the people of their town to worship gods that you have never worshiped before. 14 If you hear such a rumor, investigate it thoroughly; and if it is true that this evil thing did happen, 15 then kill all the people in that town and all their livestock too. Destroy that town completely. 16 Bring together all the possessions of the people who live there and pile them up in the town square. Then burn the town and everything in it as an offering to the Lord your God. It must be left in ruins forever and never again be rebuilt."

Can you really believe that Bill and Hilary, Christians that they are, actually follow this? Or that Jews would carry out these instructions?

It was not about race.

It was about his religion.

Obama's speech was nothing but playing the race card.

My goodmess, Americans are gullible to bs.

None of that gets any truer the more you post it. I'll just address the "take no questions" part. Obama gave reporters at the Chicago Sun Times and Chicago Tribune the opportunity to ask him any question they wanted about Rezko. He sat with them for 90 minutes and answered everything. Both came away impressed with his candor and that any candidate would talk so openly about something embarrassing, and both agreed there was no story there. I do not see Hillary offering reporters the same opportunity.

And yes, we would all like a free ride to Harvard. Unfortunately, very, very few of us merit it.

The Nixon-to-China power that only Obama has to restore a great Democratic coalition

Who can deny the boldness and brilliance shown here by Obama in confronting head-on what has perhaps been the greatest single wound to the viability of progressive politics and the Democratic Party for the last thirty years:

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

I knew Obama possessed this kind of nuanced understanding before this speech. It resonates deeply in me having come up from white, blue-collar roots. This is the theme Obama needs to continue using to reach and close the deal with many of the traditional Dem blocks who've been sticking with Hillary.

On the subject of the MSM headlines:

I've noticed the point Greg makes as well, that there is a pretty big effort underway to come up with succinct headlines that don't massively misrepresent Obama's speech..

What's interesting about this is that it's amusing to watch the MSM attempt to summarize something that inherently defies simple summary. I think it's time we realize that maybe, just maybe, some ideas are sufficiently complex that they deserve better than to be reduced to a meaningless and irresponsible sound bite. I think Obama's speech is one of these things - it contains so many ideas, so much nuance, that any attempt to "summarize" it is going to fail.

But this is where we've brought ourselves. The more we evade issues like the ones Obama brings up, the more that nuanced, complex discussion becomes necessary, in order to address all the issues we've ignored for so long.

Maybe we owe ourselves better than inflammatory headlines designed to sell newspapers, and maybe, just maybe, Obama's speech has given the MSM enough of a smack that they'll actually be forced to fully discuss his points instead of summarizing it to be consumed over your 5-minute fast-food lunch.

You will have to wait for MSNBC's wiseman Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann assess it.

"I said about four posts ago that Fox and Limbaugh were lost causes but the real audience was the MSM and the people who write the meta-narrative for the MSM like Ben Smith and Mark Halperin."

This is correct. This speech is not really intended for the rightwing noise machine, which he criticizes (playing clips again and again). The rightwing fringe which is looking for excuses to justify their opposition to him -- first Rezko, then "muslim", then too black. Whatever. These folks are in fact already accounted for in McCain's 40-45% head-to-head polling. So don't be fooled by the Rightwing bluster. The battle is for the middle.

It is intended for the Democrat, independents and moderate republicans, and especially the superdelegates. It gives people confidence that Obama won't be cowered or hobbled by the race issue. I think this was the intention.

It was a remarkable and courageous speech. Rarely have we heard a politician address race so compellingly and honestly. I hope the networks and ecvening news does this justice -- not just 15 second clip, they need to run a large segment.

Media is having a hard time grappling because they are not used to this kind of speech.

Seems like Obama is the only adult in a room full of children.

What are you people griping about? Are you really griping about Obama's media coverage?

MSNBC must be on his payroll the way they promote him. Keith Olberman is his biggest cheerleader.

The ONLY networks that gives balanced unbiased coverage is FOX and CNN and ABC.

You write: I will not vote for Obama because of how he used phony charges of racism.

Name one phony charge of racism that Obama used. (Obama, not someone else.)